Simple and cost effective wavelength setting and monitoring method using software-based wavelength estimation for WDM pluggable optical transceiver

In this paper, we propose a wavelength locker free, simple and cost effective wavelength setting and monitoring method that estimates wavelength on a software basis. This method uses preliminarily measured wavelengths at selected sets of drive current and device temperature, which are stored in the memory of the transceiver module. We then determine the relationship among the wavelength, the drive current, and the device temperature as a linear function. This function enables us to estimate the wavelength by setting and monitoring the drive current and device temperature. The same procedure is done for output power estimation. We measured the wavelength estimation accuracy using two practical DFB-LDs and confirmed that the discrepancy between the estimated wavelength and the measured wavelength was less than ±1 GHz.